THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Comic Discussion => QUESTIONABLE CONTENT => Topic started by: Morituri on 20 Nov 2015, 20:03
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May speaks fluent vulgarity. Maybe even a pidgin version of Army Creole. But, being non-biological, many of the things conventional (ie, human) vulgarity mentions really have no first-person referent for robots.
In today's example, May says "shitnuggets" when compaining about probably never getting Hank the Dismemberer's autograph.
But May has never experienced constipation in her life. She's never experienced that literal pain in the ass. She's never experienced the horror of having to use an enema or a suppository or when desperate even cruder measures to get something out of there, nor the revulsion we feel and the stench we have to endure when we have to get a screwdriver or something and break one up before the bits are small enough to flush.
I realize she's just using it as expressive language, and so do humans most of the time, but ... if your physical incarnation is immune from the actual unpleasant events they refer to, I think words like that just couldn't possibly have exactly the same meaning for the mechanically-gifted set.
On the other hand, when people say "fuck" to me I am always reminded how nice that is, and usually it brings up pleasant memories and makes me smile. Maybe I'm just weird about hearing what people say rather than (or in addition to) what they mean.
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Perhaps she was a military AI of some sort, and learned her expressions there...
For that matter, what's the source of Pintsize's interest in porn? I think an interest in biology by non-biological lifeforms is quite understandable, but that's taking it to extremes.
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QWERTY! (http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1200)
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She did want to be a fighter jet. Maybe she hung out with some Air Force folks for a while to trigger that idea? From the sounds of it, air force folks are crazy. And that's according to infantry people I know. Alternatively, she learned it in prison. Or, May is just very creative.
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May speaks fluent vulgarity.
Wow. Just wow. Today's strip really drives home the point, doesn't it?
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Perhaps she was a military AI of some sort, and learned her expressions there...
This. Doesn't matter what your duty code is or where you work, you will learn some interesting and new ways of swearing.
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A) I do wanna know what QWERTY means someday. That's really funny.
B) Perhaps it's more in the roots of language. Simply because she can't feel it herself doesn't mean she can't use the expression, right? A word is a just a sound with an agreed upon meaning. I can't say as I have had my poo make nuggets before, but I get the meaning just fine, so it can be used. Maybe not in polite society, but it can be used.
C) I can also see May using robot cuss words to cuss someone out, and seeing them confused instead of offended. I'm 100% certain that May is capable of learning human cuss words just to cuss out and offend humans properly, especially if that occurred. Pintsize also has a bit of a mouth, so perhaps AIs simply get a FULL language dictionary, and that's including cuss words and slang.
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Well taken point. If the object is to shock the listener rather than express her emotional state then it makes sense for her to use carbon-based human profanity.
edited to remove a possible implication that AnthroPCs are not people
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so perhaps AIs simply get a FULL language dictionary, and that's including cuss words and slang.
I hope so. Otherwise their communication with humans would become quite error-prone. Programming sentient AIs to be the butt of unintentional comedy would be rather unethical. "I'm sorry, but my chassis lacks the anatomical properties for the act you suggested" should never have to be said in earnest bewilderment.
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I'm sure that May and Pintsize have both thought of making chassis that actually *can* fuck themselves.
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I present the follow (non-exclusive) list of android vulgarities:
Seg Fault
Bee-SOD
404
mother board
install you
security bit (multiple context dependent meanings)
kludge
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so perhaps AIs simply get a FULL language dictionary, and that's including cuss words and slang.
I hope so. Otherwise their communication with humans would become quite error-prone. Programming sentient AIs to be the butt of unintentional comedy would be rather unethical. "I'm sorry, but my chassis lacks the anatomical properties for the act you suggested" should never have to be said in earnest bewilderment.
At first I imagined hearing that in Data's voice, but C-3PO's voice seems much more appropriate. As Tasha Yar discovered, Data's chassis is fully equipped. :wink:
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It occurs to me that AIs would learn colloquial terms in the same way a biological would. The fact that their own physical selves would necessarily have different functions and not necessarily experience the same things doesn't mean that they won't understand the accepted meaning of the term and use it in the context intended.
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I use religiously themed expletives, like most people in western cultures do, even though I don't nor ever have actually believed in any of the things to which they make reference. I can only assume the case would be the same for sexual and scatalogical expletives were I also to not personally experience that to which those refer. You pick up the words and idioms to which you are exposed, that's just the nature of language.
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Although I'm actually trying to purge religious expletives from my vocabulary, because they add legitimacy to the religions that they get their context from...
That said, some of the vulgarity of swear words is in their delivery. "Fuck" for instance is often used in contexts that are very much non-sexual (and even by sex-positive people). "Shit" is used for things that aren't fecal at all. "Bastard" is used for situations that have nothing to do with childbirth out of wedlock. Now, the connections to those terms may cast negative associations on the things they're associated with - using "fuck" as a negative swear word may actually be sex-negative, for instance - but the speaker isn't necessarily intending those associations at all. I mean, for a long time, I used Christian swears while being effectively atheist.
So, ultimately, I'd argue that an AI could easily use swears that are based in the context of biological people, quite easily, while not actually having the associations with the swears that a biological person would have.